Why would you use usenet instead of streaming? I'm assuming reliability, speed (ie. no buffering), etc?

Also, can you set up regularly scheduled downloads via usenet in the background via a timer for daily shows (like the daily show, letterman, etc??)

Cause streaming sucks, quality wise and speed wise...
Some of us have huge hard drive arrays and like to fill them up with 1080p content then stream it to our big HDTV's. A 8gb 1080p movie downloads in about 12 minutes. Usenet maxes out my connection

I usually get block accounts of 100-500gb, these last for a long time. I use Shaw (Highwinds) since it's included with my internet as my main, and Cube (also Highwinds) as a back up for older stuff since Shaw only has 60 days of retention.

Been doing this for a long time, probably since 2003.. Usenet is great, I always find torrents inconstant.

Been doing this for a long time, probably since 2003.. Usenet is great, I always find torrents inconstant.

Its all about having access to the right trackers. A good set of quality trackers will provide way more content then usenet does and higher retentions, and in my experience better speed. For example, 20 connections open to astraweb or frugal has never got me more then 30mb/sec on my seedbox vps whereas torrents from high end trackers like SCC will come down so fast that drive write speeds will be what bottlenecks the downstream...

I find usenet terrible these days, but for those of you who still use it I believe frugal and blocknews are your best combo.

Its all about having access to the right trackers. A good set of quality trackers will provide way more content then usenet does and higher retentions, and in my experience better speed. For example, 20 connections open to astraweb or frugal has never got me more then 30mb/sec on my seedbox vps whereas torrents from high end trackers like SCC will come down so fast that drive write speeds will be what bottlenecks the downstream...

I find usenet terrible these days, but for those of you who still use it I believe frugal and blocknews are your best combo.

You can't backup your own data (well, maybe you can but you wouldn't want to..). He meant as a backup provider, so to fill blocks of missing data which may not be filled by your primary unlimited provider - although some people like blocknews as a primary provider if they're not downloading multiple HD rips of everything constantly. Just run the math on what you plan to download versus the cost of an unlimited monthly connection - I know I saved money with blocks.